Am I being over optimistic to think this is doable?

[Whatallama]

My husband and I have been invited to a family wedding about 3 hours away from where we live. It's not immediate family, but I'd like to go if at all possible. It's my husbands side of the family, not that it makes much difference.

The problem is that I'm pregnant with our first, and this wedding is on the due date. My husband thinks we'd be nuts to go, but I think it may be doable. If the baby comes before, chances are we wouldn't make it, but if I'm still pregnant, there's no complications, and I still feel ok, then I'm thinking we could do it.

Obviously, we'd have to take everything with us in the car, in case I went into labour there (we'd probably stay the night of the wedding), so all the baby things, car seat, my stuff, maternity notes etc.

Ideally I'd like to just see how we're doing, but I'm not sure that's fair on the bride and groom, because they may well be wasting money on us.

It's still 6 months away, and they don't even know that I'm pregnant yet, but we'll need to chat things through with them.

I know many people will think I'm nuts for even considering this, but if I'm well, AIBU to think that with proper planning, its possible?

YABU. When your nesting hormones kick in, the last thing you will want to do is contemplate giving birth at an unfamiliar unit, and staying in an air b'n'b for the first couple of weeks of your baby's life. It might sound romantic/liberating/empowering now, but nature gives you nesting hormones for a reason. If you accept, chances are you will be a sobbing mess as your due date approaches and will end up cancelling, which is incredibly unfair on the couple.

Hormones are mean fuckers!

I've just caught up with your other posts OP. I think you are in for a huge wake up call.

Thats great for your friends, but births and babies are all different. One person being able to camp with a 4 week old doesnt mean everyone can. I could have done it with a couple of mine but with the others I was still in my dressing gown all day at that stage!

I moved at 39 weeks with DD. Didnt want to but I had to. Just because your friend moved at 1 week post partum doesnt make it a good idea.

I'd be honest with the couple and once you're happy to make the pregnancy public say 'We'd love to come but there's a possibility the baby may have arrived or arrive on that day and we'd hate to waste your money if that was the case' and see how they feel about it. I'd have said come anyway or at the very least, say come to the evening do (we were not restricted on numbers).

Dc1 came 4 days late and I felt great up until the contractions started so I'd have gone.

Dc2 came 3 days before due date so I'd not have gone but would have sent dh and dc1 for the day.

Both instances I have spoke with the B&G explained and asked if they'd rather a flat out No or a Yes with a strong likelihood that we would pull out last minute.

I don't think anyone is in a position to tell you and you are not really in a position to know.

When I went to the wedding we knew we would have family to stay with if baby arrived. Not only was that important for practical reasons but for emotional ones.

Like I said, the wedding was fun, I enjoyed it, we left when the real drunkenness started and the journey back was fine. I didn't need the loo at all and wasn't uncomfortable.

You can't really measure yourself against anyone else - your go gettem pals may be hiding exhaustion or anxiety and others who would be averse to go may spend weeks bored and get miserable with monotony - or none of the above of course

You are a tiny bit mad to consider this but you don't seem up for a debate on that front anyway.

The whole point though is that if you have a four week old, the birth went fine, feeding is going well, rest of family coping well, you can then make a good decision about whether to go camping.

Moving house I guess she didn't have a choice.

I think you are going to have a difficult time if your friends are being quite so blase about it, I have a lot of friends and some had very difficult birth experiences, some a breeze, but although some did things like go to weddings a few weeks after birth, none were 300 miles away from where they needed to be on their due date. If it all turns out very well, then great, you can go adventuring off as soon as you can.

I remember being taken out for a special lunch by my boss for my very small team to mark me starting maternity leave 2 weeks before DS1 was born. I couldn't sit on the dining chair without feeling really uncomfortable, I couldn't really enjoy the food because I could only eat small amounts and getting in and out of the car exhausted me. As the due date gets closer there is a lot of discomfort that nature provides to put you firmly in the mind set of wanting the baby out asap. If you really want to go to this wedding could you just say "Yes" to the ceremony - you really won't feel like partying.

Your husband is right. You are nuts to think of going!

I would much rather take a 4 week old camping or move house with a new born than go to a wedding 3 hours away on my due date !

What's the obsession with being superwoman? Life doesn't stop but it changes a lot and that's OK. DD was early and in NICU. Once she was out I had no desire to leave the house for weeks, days were happily spent just cuddling my tiny, fragile, precious girl. There's plenty of time for adventure now she's more robust.

My labours went pretty well and yet I was still bleeding heavily postpartum and needed big nighttime towels, my tits were huge and leaky, my newborn cried constantly, fed constantly, had terrible reflux and colic and wouldn't lie down flat without vomiting. Add to that a potential episiotomy or c section wound and I can think of nothing worse than dressing up for a bloody wedding!

I couldn't have moved house a week after having DS1 because he was an undiagnosed breach and I ended up with an emergency CS. I could have just about managed with DS2. Mind you neither of mine waited until my due date to turn up.

When you have a baby your life will change.

I wouldn't want to risk that personally.
I made fairly short journeys by train and bus the week of my due date, but I felt fine and I wasn't one of these pregnant women who wanted to put my feet up and relax and who refused to do anything. I had to keep busy. I knew that little miss or little mr wasn't coming on my due date (I stood doing a pile of ironing and light cleaning on my actual due date). But I knew there was not a singer sign there.
That said, I wouldn't want to be at a family wedding, just in case

I agree with the poster who says you are likely to be at best severely disappointed or at worst sink into a depression if your expectations of yourself are so high.

If a new mother can go camping/scale a mountain/go potholing a week before birth and then again a week later, great - but 99.9% of women are not going to be able to do that. And that is natural . It's not weakness, or not getting a grip, or "giving in" and allowing oneself to degenerate into a frumpy earth mother.

You will not necessarily at nine months be enormous, tired, swollen, weepy, incontinent, etc etc... but you may well be - and that's ok. It's not failure.

My due date was last thursday (1st) and I finished work on the 2nd. My thinking was if the baby comes early, obviously I will stop earlier than planned. Likewise should some medical circumstance dictate. If I continue to feel well enough to work, then I will. I smiled and nodded through some pretty patronising responses to my decision in the earlier weeks. In the end it was fine. I was huge and tired but it was fine. I remain huge and no less tired now I'm sitting at home. It has certainly been my experience so far that people who (for their own valid reasons which I do not judge or question!) decided to take things slower / easier in the latter stages of pregnancy find it hard to understand that anyone might want to / be able to make a different choice to them.

Work is one thing, would I feel like attending a wedding? Honestly that is hard to say. Last night I had a reasonable night's sleep and this morning the sun is shining and I feel in relatively good spirits. Two days ago I was weeping on the couch and couldn't even explain why. There are days I truly feel I cannot face social engagements of any kind. How do you feel about baby related questions? I struggle with the endless repetitions of the same enquiries. Maybe you feel differently, or maybe your friends, being generally further down the baby-making track than you (mine are not) wouldn't do this. How much of an alcohol fuelled wedding will it be? Drinking is not a fun spectator sport.

The logistical stuff would not bother me. I'm about to give birth and I'm not even sure what bit of the hospital it is we go to and it is a certainty that everyone who attends me will be a stranger. That would be no different in another part of the country. The process is likely to be stressful and chaotic in places. That would also be true in another part of the country. The fact that your DH has 6 months off regardless and can take care of the driving / packing etc etc is good.

Yes to consultation with the couple and / or reimbursement of any wasted costs as appropriate.

In answer to your AIBU 'to think that with proper planning, its possible - No. With proper planning, it is certainly possible.

I haven't seen close to my due date with either of mine, but I was selected to present at a European conference a week or so after my due date, three hours away (thankfully in the UK, though I was cross when I first was accepted!). I didn't want to turn down the opportunity on the chance I wouldn't make it, and the organisers were happy with that. As it was, we made the journey is a few stages, with a stop at the in-laws overnight, and our 5w old DD was just fine. I would have been happy delivering in that city, knowing how good their obstetric/NICU care is, so had I have gone over and been able to travel, I would have gone.

I moved house two weeks before giving birth

Is there an option to see how you feel closer to the time? Our caterers wanted final numbers a week beforehand, and we 'promoted' a couple of evening-only guests when illness struck and two friends couldn't make our wedding. So no-one lost out financially. If you tell them you'd love to come, but that you can't say for certain, they may be able to accommodate that somehow.

I agree to a greater or lesser extent that 'life goes on' when you have kids. It had to in some way, or I would have completely lost my marbles. I'm lucky to have a DD who is flexible in terms of bedtime, can eat out with us, enjoys a variety of things on holiday, and understands that we are all equal parts of the family. Yes, she is my priority, but DH and I still do the things that are important to us.

It bothers me that people think that they can pop a baby out and then be fine. My midwife told me that it takes 9 months to grow a baby and 9 months to get over it. She was being lighthearted but what she meant was that it is a massive physical and emotional thing to go through, and that needing time to get over the physical and get used to new emotional is perfectly normal.

You need to be near a familiar hospital and being so heavily pregnant makes it a bad idea all round.

I have already said, I probably will say no. It will be more about fairness to the couple, than anything else though.

I do think people are being a tad over dramatic though about it being a 'risk' to both of us. If the baby needs NICU, its better off born where the wedding is. If the baby needs NICU, then it would be transferred to a hospital at least an hour away from where I live anyway.

Yes there's the theoretical possibility that I will suddenly go into labour whilst stuck in traffic on the motorway, but unless I live at the hospital, I'd have to get there,wherever I'm giving birth, and there's the possiblity of getting stuck. I wouldn't go somewhere there wasn't a hospital within easiy travelling distance (and yes, I'd have all the numbers to hand of every hospital on the route, just in case).

I travel a lot for work, and there's equally the possiblity that before I go on maternity leave, that I could go into labour in a different city, by myself, if I went into labour early. I'm used to travelling every day, so perhaps this is why it doesn't seem like such a big deal to me.

If I'm too tired to go, I wouldn't go.
If I was feeling too ill to go, I wouldn't go.
If I was struggling to manage car journeys, I wouldn't go.
Its only if I feel fine, and happy abou going, that I'd think about going, and I think thats just too unpredictable for the couple, which is why I'm going to probably say no.

I've never turned down a wedding in my life, and they are family - thats why I'd like to go. I'm not a party animal, but I'm pretty sociable, and I don't think its weird to not want to have to turn down a wedding invite. I love weddings :-)

Believe me you won't enjoy a long journey with a baby pressing on your bladder

I wouldn't go. But then my babys all came ahead of their Due date.

I think you are underestimating how tired you will be at that stage of pregnancy and also the stress this will place on your DH. Just supposing you got to the wedding and your waters broke mid ceremony, not really fair on bride and groom or hubby. I would send them a gift and then visit with baby when they get back from honeymoon

x

Also don't forget you will have increased antenatal care close to your due date. You might have a scheduled sweep (or more than one), induction or elective C-section. There are many variables to consider.

Nor the lovely wedding food if your stomach is squashed to the size of a walnut and you have the sort of heartburn that gaviscon can't touch.

I wouldn't have minded a wedding - its the journey that would be too much.
I went to the cinema with friends the night before going into labour. The next day I went shopping in Central London started to get labour twinges so caught the bus home carrying the shopping. But I would have struggled to spend 3 hours sitting in a car. If the baby is in an awkward position they put pressure on nerves or on your stomach and if you are crammed in a car seat its hard to get comfortable.

If you do decide to go then get one of these
www.amazon.co.uk/Clippasafe-CL575-Bump-Belt/dp/B0007VB6WI
It holds the seatbelt in a safer position.

Can you put off decision for a few months?